The closest language to English

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LAA - Juaquin en la caja!   Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:51 am GMT
And the winner is...... Frisian!!

Yes, we already knew that. But after Frisian????

The runner-up is............. ????

In addition to providing your opinion as to what that answer should be, I would love for one of you to provide a link to spoken Frisian for me. If you have it handy that is. Thank you dearly.
Uriel   Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:54 am GMT
You need to be talking to Sander. He's covered this subject a million times.

I'm thinking after Friesian comes Dutch.

Travis will be arguing, though, that Scots is a different language than English and deserves the number one slot. Stay tuned for that....
LAA - Juaquin en la caja!   Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:02 am GMT
Oh yes, I know. All too well, I might add. Dutch is definitely closer than German. I don't even want to talk about Scots, which is just a highly corrupted form of English.

Out of the MAJOR languages, Dutch is definitely the closest in my book.
Sander   Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:19 am GMT
In order of relatedness to English

*Scots
*Frisian
*Low Saxon (dialects of German, spoken in Northern Germany, did not experience the HGCS)
*Dutch (because its lack of the HGCS)
*German (If one would revert the HGCS, would probably be closer to English than Dutch)
--------
*North Germanic languages, first would probably be Danish.
greg   Mon Jul 31, 2006 6:49 pm GMT
LAA - Juaquin en la caja! : « I don't even want to talk about Scots, which is just a highly corrupted form of English. »

Au lieu de proférer des enormités qui vont certainement te valoir un recadrage net et rapide, pourquoi ne t'informes-tu pas au préalable sur ce que tu ignores si complètement ?
Benjamin   Tue Aug 01, 2006 3:45 pm GMT
>> Travis will be arguing, though, that Scots is a different language than English and deserves the number one slot. Stay tuned for that.... <<

And I will be arguing that Northumbrian is a separate language, and that deserves the number one slot before Scots.
Guest   Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:50 am GMT
<In order of relatedness to English

*Scots
*Frisian
*Low Saxon (dialects of German, spoken in Northern Germany, did not experience the HGCS)
*Dutch (because its lack of the HGCS)
*German (If one would revert the HGCS, would probably be closer to English than Dutch) >

So whats with the stupid argument on the other thread about how English is now a romance language? Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English.
Frans   Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:22 am GMT
Sander Said:
*North Germanic languages, first would probably be Danish.

I heard that a couple of towns along the North English coast has Norwegian influence on their local dialect (if there any).

Anymore information on this?
Uriel   Wed Aug 02, 2006 8:42 am GMT
<<Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English. >>

I think those honors would go to French, for obvious reasons. Then Latin.
Sander   Wed Aug 02, 2006 10:09 am GMT
>> Ok Could someone extend this list so it includes a romance language? I want to see how close is a romance language related to English. <<

Do you even know what related means? It doesn't refer to which language looks most like English it's about the relation they have with eachother. In that way, it doesn't matter if French looks more like English, because Icelandic will always be closer.

It works like this;

*English and Scots have a common ancestor, Old English.

*English and Frisian have a common ancestor, languages who experienced the Ingvaeonic sound shifts.

*English and Low Saxon were very similar in the past, Low Saxon even partially experienced the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law and no HGCS.

*etc

The point where English and French have a common ancestor lies at Proto-Indo European. Which means French is basically just as related to English as Russian and Greek are.
Guest   Wed Aug 02, 2006 10:20 am GMT
The timeline doesn't go as far back as Proto-Indo European for the strong interlude that English had with French.
Sander   Wed Aug 02, 2006 12:02 pm GMT
>>The timeline doesn't go as far back as Proto-Indo European for the strong interlude that English had with French. <<

Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness.
Guest   Wed Aug 02, 2006 1:17 pm GMT
>>Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness.<<

Maybe so in terms of the classical way languages are viewed and grouped according to their origin. But historically because of its long relationship with French, other areas of English have also been heavily influenced by French, like phraseology. And this is what contradicts the conventional classification.
Sander   Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:00 pm GMT
Ridiculous.
Brennus   Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:42 pm GMT
Re: Loanwords have little to no effect on the order of relatedness. - Sander

I agree with you here and think that most linguists would also.

For example, despite its Chinese-like appearance and numerous Chinese loan words, Vietnamese is closer related to the Malayan, Indonesian, Tagalog and the Polynesian languages than to Chinese, and it would be a mistake to classify it as a "Sinitic" or "Sino-Tibetan" language.

Likewise, Maltese is still recognizably a Semitic language (probably Old Arabic-derived) despite numerous Italian and Sicilian loans.
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